The difficulty of policy transfer in physical education: the failure of UNESCO’s Quality Physical Education in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Background

Scholars have long emphasised the complexities and difficulties of educational policy transfer as educational systems develop path dependent.

Purpose

The case study of the Quality Physical Education (QPE) pilot project in South Africa aims to show that besides a lock-in effects in national educational policies, decoloniality, that is, a decreasing acceptance of policy approaches from the Global North in the Global South creates new transfer obstacles.

Methods

The case study employs a process-tracing research design. The policy revision process of the QPE project is examined in detail. Data sources include governmental reports and minutes, 17 semi-structured interviews and field notes of participant observations. The data were analysed by qualitative inductive and deductive coding.

Findings

The QPE project failed in its ambition to reinstate PE as standalone subject because it proved impossible to solve the substantial coordination and resource allocation problems between different ministries, the university and the school sector. The project never gained policy salience as it ignored the more fundamental problems of the educational system and the everyday experiences of South African communities. Moreover, South African stakeholders perceived the project as patronising and neo-colonial. Hence, the project rather reinforced the existing policy path, which is focused on sport as extra-curricular school activities rather than PE.

Conclusion

While the QPE pilot project seems to have catalysed a discussion on PE among South African stakeholders, the failure of the QPE project might indicate a growing resistance against asymmetrical policy transfer from the Global North.

KEYWORDS:

• Path dependency
• policy resonance
• decoloniality
• case study
• process tracing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by German Academic Exchange Service; Federal Ministry of Education and Research.